LIGHTS' Positive Path To Stardom

It was a dark and stormy day when CHARTattack talked to LIGHTS. The electro-pop songstress was trapped in the middle of a snowstorm and forced to cancel a show for only the third time in her career.

To add insult to injury, the snow had even shut down the local Taco Bell, leaving her with nothing to eat for lunch save for some beef jerky from the corner store.

Dim as things were looking for LIGHTS, though, the situation couldn't keep the pint-sized dynamo down for long. All it took was a few questions and one suggestion of superstardom to get the singer giggling and talking a mile a minute about her fans, her future and her debut album, The Listening.

CHARTattack: Some of the songs from your self-titled EP last year make a reappearance on The Listening. Why did you decide to do that?
LIGHTS: The EP was only ever intended to be a setup — like a taster for what was to be the full meal — and that was the full-length album. It was purely for the interim, to hold myself and everyone over, give a little introduction before the actual, big, official album came. So it only made sense to put a few of the songs on. But I definitely left a couple of them for just the EP — "White" and I "Owe You One" — just so the people who bought the EP don't feel ripped off or anything like that.

Do you feel any differently about the EP songs? Or were they all written around the same time, anyway?
The songs on the full-length album are all written over the course of two or three years. That being said, I'm not tired of any of them and I don't love one of them more than another because they were all written with different feelings at different times and for different reasons.

I always make sure that I write something that I love no matter what and that way I won't get tired of playing them every night 'cause that's what I'm doing.

Your lyrics are a blend of wistful and inspirational. Do you consider yourself more of a melancholy person or a positive one?
I'm definitely a more positive thinker, but that's not to say that I don't get down more often than not. It's human nature.

It's easy to get down on yourself and always want to become better and you find yourself in those dark nights when everything seems kind of hopeless and no matter how positive of a person you are, that's always bound to find you. And it's those moments that inspire my music and I take those moments and turn them into something positive to bring myself out of that.

So music, in a way, is kind of therapeutic. And, in turn it helps me to discover something new about myself every time I write a song.

You're very well-connected to your fans through the Internet. How important is that to you?
There's so important. It's the reason my music is here today.

I mean, MySpace was the first platform I had to reach out to anyone or to show the world my music. And it wasn't only a platform to show people what I had, it was kind of a cool way to organize myself and all of my ideas in a way that was digestible and accessible for people to understand and help me figure out myself in the same way. Like, you know, there's a slot for a picture, there's a slot for a title, there's a slot for your quote and then there's a slot for your song.

It's a really great way to organize someone like me who has tons of ideas and way too many things that she wants to do. It really helped get myself organized off the bat and really helped me focus my attentions and really find myself on a good path. So I definitely owe a site like MySpace a lot.

And anyone that doesn't utilize the Internet to its fullest extent is just being ignorant, because it's such a fantastic way to reach out to people.

Would you say that it's almost another creative outlet for you?
Oh, it totally is! Absolutely. I'm able to show people acoustic versions of my songs, and my artwork and I'm able to branch out with comics and music videos are viewable online, considering MTV doesn't play them anymore. It's like a playground and a creative breeding ground. It's really cool.

The buzz around you these days is that you're pretty much destined to be a superstar. Do you listen to that kind of hype? Does it excite you?
It's very exciting. But, I mean, one of the things that I'm always very wary about is taking in too much third party buzz, I guess, regardless of whether it's bad or good. 'Cause when it's bad, it just gets you down, and I've experienced that firsthand. And when it's good, it just puffs your head up and gives you a false sense of who you are.

Being raised a home-schooled kid, basing all of my ambitions on my own standards, I'm used to just being able to do that for myself and trying to avoid things that other people are saying. But if that's the case, if people are saying that, that's pretty cool.

Are fame and world domination goals of yours?
Well, fame is definitely not a goal. I kind of set this standard when I first started making music and I was always getting warned about how the industry can eat you up and spit you out and change you as a person, and I thought: "That's never going to happen to me. I'm going to make a sentence, like a focus sentence that whenever I feel like I'm losing my head, I'll go back to this and know that this is why I'm doing this."

And so, to this day, I make music to reach as many people as possible in a positive way, and in a relatable positive way, so that I can always be myself and just try to reach out to as many people as possible.

So, I mean, that isn't necessarily synonymous with fame, but I definitely want to show people my music, and that's the ambition, for sure.

I never want to take over the world. Maybe in another life I can, and that's why Captain LIGHTS is out! She's working on it.